


The Last Journey

by Storywriter1ID



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Immolation, implied suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-05
Updated: 2014-12-05
Packaged: 2018-02-28 05:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2720480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Storywriter1ID/pseuds/Storywriter1ID
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Chief of the Southern Water Tribe takes his final journey. His wife won't let him go alone</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Journey

Disclaimer: The characters in this story are the sole property of the producers of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I claim nothing.

According to custom, the old chief was laid out in his blue and gray wolf-warrior armor, his war club placed at his right arm, his arms crossed over the boomerang on his chest, the hilt of his black, meteoric steel jian clutched in his hands.

The tribal shamans said their words, and four strong Water Tribe warriors bore up their old chief on their shoulders, and carried him out of the magnificent palace toward the harbor. The Southern Water Tribe had grown and prospered during the 60 years since the war's end, largely due to the wisdom of the old chief who had ruled for forty of those years. He'd encouraged trade, scientific progress, and strong diplomatic ties to the other nations, especially their old enemy the Fire Nation. Now, the Southern Water Tribe's capital's grandeur rivaled that of their sister tribe in the north.

Arm in arm with his mother, the new chief followed after his father, with his own children, cousins, and other family falling in to form the procession. The people of the tribe lined the route, each paying respect in his or her own way to their fallen leader.

The procession arrived at the harbor, and the pall bearers placed the old chief on the deck of a specially prepared boat. They disembarked, and some of the tribe's waterbenders took their stances, preparing to bend the boat out to sea. "Wait!" cried out the old chief's wife as she tore herself from her son's grasp and strode purposefully toward the boat.

The new chief reached out after her. "Mother, what are you doing?"

"I am going with him," she said matter-of-factly.

"Mother," the chief pleaded, "you can't. It's not yet your time."

"You forget who I am, my son. It  _is_  my time, if  _I_ say it is." She fondled the ruby betrothal necklace at her throat. "When we were children, I followed your father from one end of the Earth Kingdom to the other. We have traveled many more miles through life together since. I will not let him take this last journey alone."

With tears welling up in his golden eyes, the new chief nodded his assent, and the old woman boarded the boat. To the waterbenders, he ordered, "Proceed." They took their stance, and pushed the boat out to sea. A platoon of archers lit their arrows and took aim at the boat's sail. The chief held up his hand and said, "Archers, stand down."

Just then, the boat was engulfed in a brilliant, blue flame.

 


End file.
